carolinamike

It’s been a long time since I’ve checked in, and I don’t know how many of the old hands are still around, but I just thought I would pop in and say hello! It’s been 14 years since I joined TU it’s nice to see it’s still going strong!!!

Hi everyone, I have not checked in a while , I hope that you all are doing well

yes . zorn

Crom, if Josh works for reaction, Andre is not gonna like it very much if he answers your questions, so I will try to. If youre talking about doing a complete color switch, which includes a different color plastic and flake, just for the liquid part youre probably talking about an hour to an hour and a half, then you have to run the plastic out of the heat exchanger and depending on the size of the bait and flake this could add as much as another hour. Most companies will quote the amount of baits to be produced in an 8 hour period to be 10,000 pieces. The 30-40 gallons is for one machine, I have run some big baits but use 50 gallons a day. Its no so much repairs as it is upkeep of the machine, machines with pumps have to have the staters replaced often. Depending on what type of pump, staters can be as much as 200-300 dollars a piece, so if you have a two color machine, that doubles. Zorn machines are great, but very expensive and you have to have an extensive knowledge of plastic and how it flows. You get one day of training when you buy a machine, a pneumatic machine will probably run you around 40,000 dollars or more, a hydraulic machine will probly be around 60,000 or more. If the machines are very well maintained, then there shouldn't be many repairs but amatuer mistakes can be very expensive. A lot of times Ray won't quote a machine to someone that he is sure is not ready, the first time I called him he told me I had no need for the type of machine he sells, which was a very big favor he done for me at the time, when I called him back 8 years later, he ageed that I was ready then. If he would've sold me a machine the first time I would have lost my butt. I did get your P.M. if you would like to talk, you can P.M. me again and I will give you my phone number.

Wow I can't believe someone pulled this one back up, but I'm glad they did. Man it brings back bad memories! Guys please be careful, 350 degree, sticky substance is definatly nothing to play around with. Keep a container of water near your work station and gloves are a good idea as well. I cannot express to you how painful that expirience was. Bait making is a great, fun hobby but you can never be too safe.

The Spike-It paste is easy to use for little guys too. The secret is to weigh the coloring. If you try to use drops, it just won't work very well. About a gram per 20 ounces of plastic is usually sufficient. But it is very messy. As far as changeable colors go, Spike-It has those also. They have a burple, which looks brown out of the water and looks purple in the water. Now that could be the other way around, I haven't used that color in a while. Also, their STP motor oil changes colors when put in the water. I have used Spike-It colors for 14 years. They've never not been able to match a color, or they've always been able to tell me what colors to mix to achieve what I was looking for. On the paste, you need to use just a little plastic softener stirred in, just so you can pour it out of the container. And it also helps it to mix well, and there's a little bit more stirring involved.

Why not buy silica powder and make it yourself? All the sinking additive is is silica (ground glass).

If you are injecting the mold it is really simple to see what the problem is, the mold has absolutley no venting. Scratch Awl or a triangular shaped jewlers file or mini file will do fine, you can buy the mini files and scratch awls at Lowes or Home Depot. The vents do not have to be very deep, make the vents on each side of the worm every 1/4" all the way down the length of the worm. As long as the vents are not too deep then there is no such thing as too many. Also put a vent coming straight out of the bottom of the tail. Looking at the mold, there is absolutley no where for the air to escape. When you inject do it slowley so the plastic has time to push the air out, even if you hand pour these I fear you wont get a quality worm without some sort of air encapsulation or incomplete worm. Proper venting will give you a quality product and production time will be cut in half. Also you only have to vent one half of the mold.

Lureworks has scuppernong already made up. They carry almost all major colors. Sometimes it's not listed on their website, you just have to call and ask. I've used it for years and it's a match to Zoom's.

Actually doing both achieves the same thing, yes pouring scent into the plastic before pouring the bait does work but you lose some scent due to the heating process, but also using a good plastisizer mixed with the scent as said above will achieve exactly the same thing. The plastisizer is absorbed into the bait all the way to the core of the bait, but of course you lose some scent due to mixing it with plastisizer. Either process you use will hold scent as long as the other but using the cold method, you do have to allow time for the plastisizer to absorb into the bait. Once it is absorbed into the bait, it will not wash off and you are achieving the same thing as if you are adding scent to the hot plastic. It really dosen't matter which process you choose to get the scent into the plastic, as long as the scent is there. It is just a matter of personal preference. I have added scented plastisizer to a bag of baits and the baits actually were dry after 2 or 3 days because they absorbed the plastisizer.

I also used to buy worms like this from California, they were called the California worm (little shark), these worms are actually what got me started making my own. All you do is pour the plastic in the mold and pour the salt on top, because the salt is cool it will not sink into the bottom bait (which is actually the top). I had a plastic container, about 10 four cavity hand-pour molds, and bowl of salt, I used popcorn salt. I would fill the four cavities, put the mold in a plastic container, and pour the salt over it. The salt would cool the plastic on top, I would pour the excess salt off into the plastic container then put the excess salt back into the bowl and repeat the process. You would be suprised with 40 cavities how much production you could actually achieve.

I have bought one from them and I have built one myself. You do not want to buy one of these pots from LureCraft. First off, the pot isn't produced by LureCraft, it is just sold by them. They are very cheaply built, especially for the price they're charging. The gear motors that stir the plastic do not do a very good job, they are cheap and really stir liquid only. Once the plastic gets ready to pour it puts a strain on these motors, the pots are not sealed where the adjetator rod goes into the top of the pot, they continually leak air. I use teflon to try to seal it and the motor wasn't strong enough to turn the adjetator bar, the most I could get was 4 to 5 psi. It continually leaked, so the continuing circulation of air caused innacurate temperature reading. The thermal coupling is attatched to the heat band so you're only getting a read out on the band and not the plastic itself. Light colors were almost impossible to do without yellowing, also the valve itself is very cheap, you continually get freeze off and you have to keep unstopping the valve. They send you a small pair of needle nosed locking pliers to actually operate the valve, the steel pliers on a brass valve is really rough on the valve itself. I actually had to have a heated valve made out of stainless steel to solve some of the problems mentioned above. It took some time, a good welder, and a good machinist but I actually built one for around 900 bucks and it was ten times better than the one I purchased from LureCraft, I have actually shot molds with as much as 20 psi and it is a whole lot safer than the ones LureCraft sells. The air regulator is not rated to withstand the heat that is generated by the pot also, there is several safety issues with the LureCraft pot and I dont want to see anyone hurt and also I recieved no kind of operating instructions whatsoever. I was told that the heat control had a whole lot more functions than what I was using, I called the gentleman that made the pot and he told me he would send me the instructions, its been more than 7 years and after a couple of phone calls I still dont have those instructions. Sorry this is so long, but like I said, I dont want top see anyone hurt.

It will definitely work. There's already machines like this on the market and they have been used for years, but out of common courtesy, I really can't go into any great details, all I can really do is tell you the basics, and besides a Presto pot by itself really couldn't be considered a plastic machine. If you want to thousands per day efficiently, then automation is a must and pretty well standard in the industry.

From what I can gather, you guys are talking about heating a round pot, this sounds very similar to what LureCraft already has and theirs has already proven that this is not the best way to heat plastic. I know, I have owned two. Its impossible to do white or other light colors because you're heating the sides of the pot, even if it is continually adjitated, it does not heat evenly and if you adjitate hot plastic you incorporate air bubbles. So maybe I can add a different track of thinking here, The round pots can be great for feeding a heat exchanger. They can be pressurized and adjitated without incorporating air or lets say incorporating air to the raw material dosent make any difference when thinking along these lines. You can buy painting pots with air adjitators that can act as a resivior for your raw material which can be pressurized to feed a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger must be built in way that the raw plastisol enters from one side and plastisol ready to pour exits from the other, this is basically how all injection presses work. You will need a press to hold the mold to build a machine to produce the volume mentioned in the beginning. One thing to keep in mind is that you want at least half of the plastic leaving the heat exchanger per cycle, this keeps flake and other components suspended, colors stay true, and plastic does not burn. Thinking along these lines will help you build a proper machine but by the time you invest in building your own machine, you can probably buy used equippment from someone like Sims just as cheap or cheaper.

His family has our prayers and condolences.